News and analysis on politics, human rights and civil society in Latin America by Geoffrey Ramsey

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Indigenous Protests Break Out in Brazil as Govt Alters Stance on Land Grants

A wave of
indigenous protests have broken out across Brazil, following reports that Brazil’s
President Dilma Rousseff has instructed her government to refrain from approving
tribal claims to arable land.

On Tuesday,
Brazil announced it would be sending security forces to the farming state of Mato
Grosso do Sul in response to a land takeover by an indigenous group. The
incident began on May 15, when some 200 Terena Indians occupied a ranch
belonging to a local politician. In 2010 the government designated the land as their
ancestral territory, but last year a local court overturned this. Police
evicted them in a violent
confrontation on May 30 that left one protester dead and five police
officers injured. The Terena resumed their occupation of the ranch again the
next day.

Another
eviction order has been requested, but a second operation has been put on hold
while a federal court examines the case, according to Folha
de Sao Paulo. The AP reports that the government has sent 110
military police from the elite National Force to contain the conflict.

Meanwhile, Reuters
notes that several other indigenous demonstrations have sprung up around the
country. On Monday, a group of Kaingang Indians occupied the offices of the
ruling Workers' Party in Parana state, and refused
to leave until they were promised a meeting with Rousseff’s chief of staff,
Gleisi Hoffmann. On Tuesday, the administration took the dramatic step of ordering air force planes
to fly roughly 150 indigenous protesters who oppose the controversial Belo
Monte megadam to Brasilia for negotiations. According to O
Globo, the meeting ended without an agreement.

The
protests come just weeks after Rousseff allegedly instructed her government to
stop approving new applications for Indian lands “for
the forseeable future,” a major policy shift for her administration.
Analysts say the move is meant as a peace offering to the booming agricultural
sector ahead of 2014 elections. The industry has become highly critical of Brazil’s
progressive land management laws in recent years, as tribal activists have increasingly
applied their historical claim to land in the southern farm belt.

News Briefs

The
Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly in Guatemala came to a
close today, with member states issuing a declaration agreeing to continue a
hemisphere-wide discussion of drug policy. Despite an open
letter to regional governments signed
by more than 50 leading human rights NGOs of the Americas to abandon drug prohibition
for a policy based on harm reduction, no such shift is expected to be included
in today’s closing declaration.

Prensa
Libre has more on the debate in the General Assembly, noting that Nicaraguan
delegate Denis Ronaldo Moncada was especially critical of drug legalization,
though he was the only one to refer specifically to legalization of drugs
besides cannabis at the summit. Unsurprisingly, U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry had some tough words for drug policy reform advocates as well. “I say to
all those who speak about legalization and reform: the challenges go far beyond a single
ingredient. Drugs destroy lives, destroy families,” the Guatemalan paper quotes
Kerry as saying. Still, he did support calls for a continued and wider debate
on the issue, according to Reuters.
Another contentious issue was the proposed creation of a monitoring mechanism
to track the suggestions of the recent OAS report on drugs. Canadian Foreign
Minister Diane Ablonczy opposed the suggestion, maintaining that the
Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission already serves that purpose.
Whether or not a new mechanism will be established will be revealed in the
final draft of the declaration, to be released today.

The summit
also reportedly brought progress in U.S.-Venezuela relations. El
Universal and the New
York Times report that Kerry met with his Venezuelan counterpart, Foreign
Minister Elias Jaua, for 40 minutes yesterday in which they agreed to improve bilateral
relations. The two were photographed
shaking hands together, and the meeting is believed to be the first encounter
between high-level representatives of the two countries since President Obama briefly
met Hugo Chavez at an OAS summit in 2009. The NYT notes that the meeting occurred
after Venezuela expelled an American filmmaker it had arrested and accused of being
a spy.

Last week, The
Guardian acquired extracts of the 7,000-page “Figueiredo report,” which
details atrocities committed against Brazil’s indigenous population during the
country’s military dictatorship. The report was believed to have been destroyed
in a suspicious fire at the agricultural ministry shortly after it was
submitted, and none of the 134 officials named as participants in more than
1,000 crimes have been arrested.

While
Chinese President Xi Jinping did not meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro on his recent trip to the region, China remains an important ally to the
Venezuelan government. Proof of this came yesterday in the form of an announcement
by Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who said the Maduro administration had
secured
$4 billion in credit from China to be used for oil field development.

As peace
talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels progress in Havana, the
leaders of the country’s second largest guerrilla group, the ELN, are growing
impatient with the state’s apparent unwillingness to engage them in dialogue. Caracol
Radio reports that ELN leader alias “Gabino” has released a statement
calling the government’s silence on the matter “absurd and contradictory.”

U.S. Vice
President Joe Biden has penned
an op-ed on his recent visit to Latin America, which appeared in yesterday’s
Wall Street Journal. In it, Biden praises spread of democratic values in
Colombia, Costa Rica and Brazil, and describes U.S. trade relations as
contributing to an “economic boom across the Western Hemisphere.”

Peruvian Environmental
Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal has announced
that the owners of one of the world’s largest zinc and copper mines, the Antamina
consortium, has been fined $77,000 a chemical spill last year that caused dozens
of villagers to become sick. According to the AP, many locals in the northwestern
Cajacay district are still
suffering from the effects of the spill.

Reuters has
a useful look at Latin
America’s abortion laws, noting that tight restrictions on the procedure
contributed to an increase in the estimated annual number of unsafe, clandestine
abortions between 2003 and 2008, from 4.1 million to 4.4 million.